The RIP Famous Person Thread

[taxexile]

you asked for it.


mrs slocombes pussy

[genghis61]

Marathon legend Grete Waitz dies
Published: 19/04/2011 at 09:31 PM

Norway's Grete Waitz (front left) challenges Portugal's Rosa Mota (front right) in the women's marathon at the 1988 Seoul Olympics

Norwegian race legend Grete Waitz, who won nine New York marathons and a world title, died of cancer on Tuesday, her Norwegian cancer foundation announced. She was 57.

"She died overnight in hospital," Helle Aanesen, the co-founder of the Active Against Cancer Foundation, told AFP of Norway's most famous long distance runner.

Waitz, whose maiden name was Andersen, had been undergoing treatment for cancer since 2005.

She won nine New York marathons between 1978 and 1988, more than any other athlete, male or female.

Her reputation was such in the Big Apple that a half-marathon named after her, the "Grete's Great Gallop", is held every year in Central Park.

"We will forever celebrate Grete in our hearts and as an inspiration and role model for women?s running," said Mary Wittenberg, president of the New York Road Runners club that organizes the New York Marathon.

"We are sad to lose a dear friend and our most decorated champion. Her strength and grace throughout her fight with cancer were incredible and when so many people would have crumbled she stood strong and positive."

Waitz became marathon world champion at the first athletics world championships in Helsinki in 1983 and won the silver medal at the Los Angeles Olympics the following year.

She also won the London marathon in 1983 and in 1986.

The head of the Norwegian athletics federation, Svein Arne Hansen, called her "the greatest Norwegian athlete of all times".

In a statement, he praised her "not only for her sports performances, but also as a model for womens' sport".

Waitz also broke the 3,000-metres world record twice, in 1975 and 1976, and won five cross-country world championships.

She also won a total of 33 Norwegian championships in all disciplines.

There was praise also from IAAF president Lamine Diack who called Waitz "one of the brightest flames of the modern athletics era".

"The dedication, perseverance and fortitude with which Grete carved out her athletics career on the track, across the country and on the road is an example to us all, as is the positive way she tackled the illness that beset her life in recent years," he said

[Mr Lick]

Doctor Who actress Elisabeth Sladen dies



Doctor Who star Elisabeth Sladen, who was also in spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures, has died aged 63.

Sladen appeared as Doctor Who assistant Sarah Jane Smith in the BBC television sci-fi series between 1973 and 1976, opposite Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker.

The Liverpool-born actress appeared in four series from 2007 of The Sarah Jane Adventures on children's channel CBBC.

Sladen had been battling cancer for some time and leaves actor husband Brian Miller and daughter Sadie.

[Mr Lick]

Only Fools and Horses writer John Sullivan OBE dies



John Sullivan, who wrote one of the best-loved British sitcoms, Only Fools and Horses, has died at the age of 64.

He had been in intensive care for six weeks at a hospital in Surrey, battling viral pneumonia.

He also wrote Citizen Smith and Just Good Friends, and the third and final episode of his latest work Rock & Chips will be shown on BBC One on Thursday.

Sir David Jason, who played Del Boy in Only Fools and Horses, said he was "devastated" at the loss of his friend.

He said: "We have lost our country's greatest comedy writer but he leaves us a great legacy, the gift of laughter. My thoughts at this time are with his lovely family."

Nicholas Lyndhurst, who played Del's brother Rodney, said he was "shocked" and "deeply saddened" and described his friend as "without doubt" Britain's finest TV writer.

He said: "He was a shy and self-effacing man, but had a huge passion for his work and was looking forward to writing more Rock & Chips, I hope the last episode makes him proud."









Trigger: If it's a girl they're gonna name it Sigourney, after the actress. And if it's a boy they're gonna name him Rodney, after Dave.

Del: No, no not goodbye Margaret, no just Bonjour.

Once Del Boy famously followed his "He who dares, wins!" with the further wisdom "He who hesitates... don't."

As Raquel once reassured a jealous Del: "Derek, will you get it into your thick skull: I'm not trying to meet intelligent and sensitive people, I'm happy with you."

[hopskimoet]

Shame. The best British comedy sine Monty Python.

Legendary.

[Attilla the Hen]

Well........since Fawlty Towers, at least.

[TizMe]

Well........since Fawlty Towers, at least.

Well........since The Young Ones, at least

[Mr Lick]

In the words of Del ''The world was his lobster''

[genghis61]

Youngest on Hillary's Everest team dies
9:25 AM Monday Apr 25, 2011



Sherpa mountaineer Nawang Gombu, the youngest member of the climbing team that first scaled Mount Everest with Sir Edmund Hillary in 1953, died yesterday at his Indian home at the foot of the Himalayas. He was 79.

Friends and family were at Gombu's bedside when he died after a brief illness in Darjeeling, about 650km north of Kolkata, his son Kursung Phinjo Gombu said.

The first person to summit Everest twice, Gombu was considered one of the last of the so-called "Tigers of the Snow" - a small group of Sherpa mountaineers who scaled the Himalayas to bring fame and prestige to their ethnic community that originates from the mountains of eastern Tibet and Nepal.

Gombu was about 21 when he joined his uncle Tenzing Norgay and Hillary on the famous 1953 expedition, but he did not reach the top of the world's highest mountain until 10 years later when he guided the first American expedition led by mountaineer Jim Whittaker to the summit.

The 1963 expedition members were then invited to the White House, where Gombu placed a traditional white katha-style scarf around the neck of President John F Kennedy.

Gombu achieved fame two years later as the first to summit Everest twice, when he guided an Indian team to the top. He is also credited with pioneering dozens of new routes through the Himalayas and helping to open the region to tourists and trekkers seeking new and increasingly extreme climbing challenges.

Gombu's career includes numerous Indian and international awards including a Coronation Medal from Queen Elizabeth II and a Hubbard Medal from the National Geographic Society for his climbing feats.

[The Muffinman]

Well........since Fawlty Towers, at least.

Well........since The Young Ones, at least

Well......since Blackadder, at least

[jizzybloke]

Ted Lowe dies aged 90






Legendary snooker commentator Ted Lowe has died aged 90 on the opening day of the World Championship final.









'Whispering Ted Lowe', as he was affectionately known, covered the sport for 27 years after beginning on the popular television programme Pot Black.
Wife Jean said: "His health had been deteriorating for the last 10 weeks. He went into a hospice a week ago and I never left his side.
"But I could see he was slowly going. He still loves snooker and was watching it on TV."
BBC commentator John Virgo, a former player who went on to work alongside Lowe, highlighted just how integral his hushed tones were to snooker, which enjoyed immense popularity in the 1980s.
"He set a standard for us all," Virgo said. "He was wonderful, he had an impish sense of humour and, while cricket had its John Arlott and Wimbledon had its Dan Maskell, we had Ted Lowe.
"He was one of the BBC greats. It's a sad day for snooker and he'll be sadly missed."
Dennis Taylor, also now a commentator with the national broadcaster, spoke of Lowe covering his infamous 1985 black-ball world title victory over Steve Davis.
"He had a lovely, lovely voice. To hear his voice and have him commentating on the 1985 final makes it special," Taylor said.
"No praise is high enough: I had such great times with him, and I couldn't have learnt from anyone better."
Jimmy White, who reached six World Championship finals but never won the top prize, tweeted his grief: "Still in shock and so saddened. Absolutely gutted. He was a great friend of my dad's and an absolute gentleman. I loved him dearly."
Lowe recounted his big break at the BBC to Radio Berkshire, where he was born, in 2007. When commentator Raymond Glendenning turned up at the Crucible having had a little too much to drink, he was called upon to fill the gap.
"I was scared to death commentating on Joe Davis, who was a God to me," he reminisced. "Of course, sitting in the crowd I was terrified they would hear what I had to say, so I started whispering.
"The producer loved it."

[daveboy]

Boxing legend Sir Henry Cooper dies aged 76
01 May 11 21:07

Boxing legend Sir Henry Cooper has passed away at the age of 76.
The former English, Commonwealth and European heavyweight champion fought 55 times and is revered for his knockdown of Muhammad Ali in 1963.
London-born Cooper, who won the BBC Sports Personality of the Year twice, was knighted in 2000.
Alongside figures such as Frank Bruno, Tommy Farr and Lennox Lewis, Cooper is regarded as one of the all-time best British heavyweights.
Cooper, won the British, European and Commonwealth titles but never won a world title and retired in 1971 after losing to Joe Bugner.
More to follow.

[dirtydog]

[genghis61]

more Henry Cooper




Cooper famously floored Muhammed Ali, then known as Cassius Clay, in 1963. He floored the American in the fourth round with 'Enry's 'Ammer - his trademark left hook - but Ali eventually won the 1963 non-title fight at Wembley. Ali later said on British television that Cooper "hit me so hard that my ancestors in Africa felt it". Ali triumphed again when they boxed three years later but Cooper remained a favourite with the British public.

Boxing record
Total fights 55
Wins 40
Wins by KO 27
Losses 14
Draws 1

[genghis61]

2 May 2011

Osama Bin Laden

Osama Bin Laden came to the world's attention on 11 September 2001, when the attacks on the United States left more than 3,000 people dead and hundreds more injured.

In a matter of three years, the Saudi-born dissident had emerged from obscurity to become one of the most hated and feared men in the world.

Osama Bin Laden was born in 1957, apparently the 17th of 52 children of Mohamed Bin Laden, a multimillionaire builder responsible for 80% of Saudi Arabia's roads.

His father's death in a helicopter crash in 1968 brought the young man a fortune running into many millions of dollars, though considerably less than the widely published estimate of $250m.

Mujahideen
While studying civil engineering at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Bin Laden came into contact with teachers and students of the more conservative brand of Islam.

Through theological debate and study, he came to embrace fundamentalist Islam as a bulwark against what he saw as the decadence of the West.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 changed Bin Laden's life forever. He took up the anti-communist cause with a will, moving to Afghanistan where, for a decade, he fought an ultimately victorious campaign with the mujahideen.

Intelligence experts believe that the US Central Intelligence Agency played an active role in arming and training the mujahideen, including Bin Laden. The end of the war saw a sea change in his views.

Lucrative investments
His hatred of Moscow shifted to Washington after 300,000 US troops, women among them, were based in Saudi Arabia, home of two of Islam's holiest places, during the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq. Bin Laden vowed to avenge what he saw as blasphemy.

Bin Laden was the chief suspect behind the Nairobi embassy bomb

Along with many of his mujahideen comrades, he brought his mix of fighting skills and Islamic zeal to many anti-US factions within the Middle East.

American pressure ended brief sojourns in Saudi Arabia - which removed his citizenship in 1994 - and then Sudan, and Bin Laden moved back to Afghanistan in January 1996.

The country, in a state of anarchy, was home to a diverse range of Islamic groups, including the fundamentalist Taleban militia, which captured the capital Kabul nine months later.

Though geographically limited, Bin Laden's wealth, increasing all the time through lucrative worldwide investments, enabled him to finance and control a continuously shifting series of transnational militant alliances through his al-Qaeda network.

Sometimes he worked as a broker, organising logistics and providing financial support. At other times, he would run his own violent campaigns.

In February 1998, he issued a fatwa - or religious edict - on behalf of the World Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders, stating that killing Americans and their allies was a Muslim duty.

'Most wanted'
Six months later, two bombs rocked the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Some 224 people died and nearly 5,000 were wounded. He was indicted as chief suspect, along with 16 of his colleagues.

Almost overnight, Bin Laden became a major thorn in the side of America. A byword for fundamentalist Islamic resistance to Washington, he soon appeared on the FBI's "most wanted" list, with a reward of up to $25m on his head.

The US fired 75 sea-launched cruise missiles into six training camps in eastern Afghanistan in a failed attempt to kill him. They missed their target by just one hour.

As well as the African bombings, Bin Laden was implicated in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York, a 1995 car bomb in the Saudi capital Riyadh and a truck bomb in a Saudi barracks, which killed 19 US soldiers.

"I always kill Americans because they kill us," he said. "When we attack Americans, we don't harm other people."

In the case of the bombs in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, his words rang hollow. The vast majority of the dead and injured were African, not American.

The arrogance of wealth saw Bin Laden make the government of Kazakhstan a multi-million dollar offer to buy his own tactical nuclear weapon.

It comes as no surprise, then, that both the US and Israel are believed to have sent assassination squads after him.

Cult status
Then came the events of 11 September 2001. Two hijacked aircraft smashed into, and destroyed, the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York.

Another aircraft ploughed into the Pentagon in Washington and a fourth crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. Altogether more than 3,000 people died in the attacks, which led to the US-led operation against the Taleban.

Allied forces moved into Afghanistan late in 2001. At the time, it was believed that Bin Laden might have been killed during the battle for the Tora Bora cave complex.

In reality, he had slipped across the border into Pakistan, a country in which he achieved the sort of cult status usually reserved for pop stars or film actors.

In February 2003, an audio tape, purporting to be of Bin Laden, was delivered to the al-Jazeera television company.

Of the impending US-led invasion of Iraq, the voice said: "This crusaders' war concerns, first and foremost, all Muslims, regardless of whether the Iraqi socialist party or Saddam remain in power.

"All Muslims, especially those in Iraq, should launch a holy war."

The US conceded that the voice was probably Bin Laden's.

Bin Laden exhorted all Muslims to wage war against America

Careful timing
The last known sighting of Bin Laden by anyone other than his very close entourage remains in late 2001 as he prepared to flee from his Tora Bora stronghold.

He was widely assumed to have travelled east, across into Pakistan to be given hospitality and shelter by certain local Pashtun tribesmen loyal to the Taleban and opposed to their own government led by President Pervez Musharraf.

The hunt for Bin Laden took a dramatic turn with the arrest in Pakistan, in 2003, of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

The head of al-Qaeda's operations and the suspected mastermind of the Twin Towers attack, it seemed as though the net had begun to close in on Bin Laden himself.

A major offensive to capture Bin Laden was launched by the Pakistani army along the Afghan border in May-July 2004.

But a year later, Mr Musharraf admitted the trail had gone cold.

Though al-Qaeda has been prolific in issuing audio messages, often on the internet and featuring the network's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, videos of Bin Laden himself have been rare.

His appearances have been carefully timed and aimed, analysts say, at influencing Western public opinion by driving a wedge between citizens and their leaders.

One such video was issued in 2004 - the same year as the Madrid bombings - and days before the US election.

A second surfaced as the sixth anniversary of the 11 September attacks approached, timed to quell rumours that he had been dead for some time.

To his supporters, Bin Laden was a fighter for freedom against the US and Israel, not, as he was to many in the West, a terrorist with the blood of thousands of people on his hands.

[Takeovers]

That last announcement is wrong in this thread IMO! It is called "RIP Famous Person Thread".

If I were not an atheist I could say may he roast in hell for all eternity. No resting in peace.

[larvidchr]

That last announcement is wrong in this thread IMO! It is called "RIP Famous Person Thread".

If I were not an atheist I could say may he roast in hell for all eternity. No resting in peace.

Agree no RIP in this case, the scumbag do not belong in this thread.

[Norton]

That last announcement is wrong in this thread IMO! It is called "RIP Famous Person Thread".

Agree no RIP in this case, the scumbag do not belong in this thread.

Nit pickers.

[larvidchr]

Seems like we need a thread for dispatched/dead "bona fide bad guys" , made a new one in the lounge

[jandajoy]

How do we quantify "bad guys" ?

[withnallstoke]

How do we quantify "bad guys" ?

They wrap rags around their heads.

[Norton]

made a new one in the lounge

Keep it simple. Change title of this thread to "The RIP/RIH Famous Person Thread".

[jandajoy]

They wrap rags around their heads.

[jandajoy]

Change title of this thread to "The RIP/RIH Famous Person Thread".

"Famous dead people".

Let them rest as they will.

[genghis61]

does 'famous' necessarily mean 'good'? and who would be the judge of good?

When either, or both, George Bush and son W pass away, would they be similarly disqualified?

Or are we to believe they are the good guys?

Maybe it should be 'lives of note' - OBL did have an impact on many people - spare him a (nasty) thought next time you're held up at airport security.